


a love of finished years

by frostings



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, kakasaku - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 09:27:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3062624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frostings/pseuds/frostings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It took everything she had, he could see, and yet he had to draw down the shutters and close the doors against this trembling, brave girl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a love of finished years

**Author's Note:**

> special thanks to dimisfit and neonanything, the best beta readers and cheerleaders a kakasaku fic writer could ever ask for.
> 
> based on this anon prompt: Would you do a Kakasaku where Sakura tells Kakashi of her feelings for him but he rejects her and later he can’t stop thinking of her and he doesn’t confess and everything spirals outta control?

_I hurry home as though someone is there waiting for me._

_The night collapses into your skin. I am the rain._

_\- Kazim Ali_

When Sakura told him that she was in love with him, Kakashi said no. Of course.

He didn’t even need to hear it over the rain. But Sakura had raised her face, and her voice, that stubborn look in her eyes that he knew so well. The water streamed into her eyes and bogged down her face, but she said it out loud, said it strong. It took everything she had, he could see, and yet he had to draw down the shutters and close the doors against this trembling, brave girl.

What had hurt him more anything was not the disappointment on her face, no, but the sheer resignation that seeped into her features. It said, clearer than any word,  _I knew it, I knew you wouldn’t love someone like me_ , and he didn’t know how to make it better for her. Sakura knew, better than anyone, that there was no really better cure for heartbreak, so he didn’t even try. He simply put his hand over hers, and apologized.

She nodded, and forced a smile. She walked away, and he watched her go, watched her figure grow smaller before it disappeared completely from view. Kakashi didn’t know how it was possible, but he hated himself more, for causing his former student more heartbreak than he had already had, in the past, with all his shortcomings as a member of Team 7. The confession surprised him, but did not really shock him.

There had been little things; the lingering looks she gave him, the touches, and the softer, kinder words. He had ignored it, to the point of rudeness. He avoided looking at her, and refused any small gestures of kindness. In a social occasion, he answered her overtures to conversation with noncommittal responses, and left whenever she entered the room. He was sure she noticed, and, more, he knew that she was hurt.

“But it’s better this way,” he whispered to himself, and then, to the cenotaph, to all those friends who had gone away. “It’s better this way, isn’t it?”

All that answered him was the quiet patter of raindrops.

—-

One cannot think of Sakura and Kakashi’s relationship without referring to their former titles of teacher and student. Kakashi himself was not exempt to that fact; he did not magically forget what they used to be. He could not forget those early days—the burning self-doubt, the fear of falling short with these two immensely talented boys, and his sheer confusion of what to do with Sakura.

He had been afraid for Sakura to die under his watch, and that was the bare bones of it. She was intelligent, no doubt about it, and hardworking too, but he knew those weren’t enough to be talismans against death. He thought—he had honestly thought—that if he had been dismissive enough, if he had hummed noncommittally enough against her efforts to impress him, that she would shrug her shoulders and quit. That she would say that this line of work was not for her, and that she would give up. He thought it was kindness. Naruto and Sasuke had been burdened from a young age, and he did what he could for them, but Sakura…Sakura could actually choose a life away from this. All of this.

He remembered how she used to approach him during boring parts of missions, and she would ask him to teach her how to do hand seals quickly enough. They’d go through some dummy hand seals together, and when that became boring for him, she’d sit on his back as he did push-ups and quizzed him about the history of Konoha. Sakura had actually wanted to learn from him, he remembered, but he didn’t want to teach her anything. Well, that wasn’t true—he did teach her, but not as much as he could’ve had. Could’ve had, he corrected himself, but didn’t.

A few years later, when she told him, “Tsunade-sama was very hard on me and didn’t give me a break,” she said it proudly. It felt like a rebuke, and if it was, he wouldn’t really blame her.  _That’s the teacher I meant to be, Sakura,_  he wanted to say _, but I didn’t want you to hate me. I didn’t want to be the one who broke your spirit._

Instead, Kakashi had smiled and nodded; and he never once apologized.

—-

In the early days, Sakura had existed in Kakashi’s periphery, a movement out of the corner of his eye. She had a profound impact on Naruto, and Sasuke, and Sai himself benefitted greatly from her big heart and vast understanding of the human spirit. Kakashi had prided himself in not missing anything, whether it was a field strategy or a complex jutsu—and yet he couldn’t help but wonder how much he’d turned a blind eye on Sakura. What had been dainty and shy became ragged and upfront. Inner Sakura, a persona she had once denied existing, came to the forefront and revealed herself to be the real Sakura all along, loud and opinionated.

He had suspected it all along, of course. She had been, after all, in on the prank when Naruto dropped an eraser on his head.

_“And my first impression is…I don’t like you. At all.”_ Kakashi had said.

More than their rambunctiousness, he hated to have been burdened with these three. It was too much, and he was not enough. He loved them, but that wasn’t enough, either. Years after the fact, Kakashi could admit that to himself, at least.

Not that it made it better, or any less damning.

—-

Ino was in Sakura’s place when he appeared at the Hokage Tower to deliver a report.

Kakashi assumed she knew; at this point he assumed that everyone who cared about Sakura—and that was an awful lot of people—knew. That Sakura could not hide her feelings from plain sight no more than she could turn her hair green; was a fact many people knew. He waited for Ino’s disapproving glare, but was surprised when the kunoichi merely gave him a once-over and asked,

“So, she told you?”

Kakashi looked at her dumbly, which solicited an impatient sigh from the Yamanaka.

“I don’t like prying into the thoughts of others unless I really have to, Hatake,” Ino said. Kakashi blinked, slightly taken aback. She probably didn’t really mean it—she was, after all, a Yamanaka.

“I’ve taken over her tasks until she’s ready to get over this whole thing,” she continued.

Get over this whole thing. Like a construction site, or a roadwork under progress. There would be a definite timeline, until the path was smooth and clear, and Sakura could go on with her life as planned, unhindered. Somehow that was a cheerful thought, and he felt his back go a little straighter.

Ino sighed and dropped her eyes on the desk in front of her. “I told her not to, that there was nothing…” she trailed off, waving her hands uselessly about.

“It’s alright, Ino, you don’t have to say anything,” Kakashi said quietly. And really, Ino didn’t have to say anything, didn’t have to explain anything. Sakura’s love for him—and what that love turned out to be was something everyone could do without, especially for Sakura herself. Sometimes love was grand and all-encompassing and powerful, but when it came to him, love turned out to ash and tragedy and humiliation. He wanted to spare Sakura that.

He handed over the parchment, written and submitted on time for once. Since Sakura’s confession there had been many sleepless nights, and he had nothing better to do.

Ino hummed and took the parchment from him. But there was something in those keen eyes of hers—

“The thing is,” Ino suddenly said. She paused, and collected herself, clearly debating if she should impart what she was about to impart. Then Ino finally decided, swallowed down her own protests. “The thing is, Kakashi, is that Sakura is sure that you love her, too.”

It was not what he expected. He felt cold all over, then angry. Anything else, he shut down with a heavy hand.

“Well?” Ino challenged. “Do you?”

How dare she. What right did anyone to presume his feelings?

“No, Ino,” he said flatly, but he can’t help clenching his fists. “I really don’t.”

—-

The realm of romantic love had been Obito’s, and that memory was as faded as an old photograph. Kakashi had never much interest in it, and to him, it had only served as a distraction in missions. He didn’t understand the hold of romantic love over the hearts of people, and although he had seen great acts (and horrible misdeeds) done in the name of romantic love, it had been, and perhaps always will, remain as a curiosity, at most.

He had seen Sakura love Sasuke, and until recently, was sure that he had seen her fall in love with Naruto, but, Kakashi was wrong all over again. He had been certain that Sasuke had a hold on her heart like no one else, or later, that she would understand her heart better and see Naruto within it. He had assumed that he would be, as he had always been, and what would always be, a bystander.

He couldn’t help but wonder if he had unconsciously encouraged her down this path. Was there something that he could’ve said or did, to dissuade her from feeling this way? He wracked his brain, going up and down trains of thought that led nowhere. All he had were moments, all of them were moments, until she had smiled at him in a certain way and she had trembled when he was close when he was hit by a sudden understanding.

—

But when he saw her next, there was nothing of that sentiment present on her serene face. She laughed and talked with him like nothing ever happened, nothing at all. Kakashi had not expected anything more, but for things to be significantly  _less_  took him by surprise.

He was gratified at first, and then mystified, and then happy; and then bewildered, and then annoyed. It was like a vague, maddening itch whose source he could not identify. But he played along; he was lazy and casual and flippant as usual. If she wanted to get back to normalcy as soon as possible, he would try to make it as quick as possible for her.

Kakashi wanted to feel relief at her indifference, but it did not come. He almost asked her outright about it, but knew that was a cruel thing to do. He tried not to think about it, and ultimately decided that not talking about it would be the best thing to do, and that she would approach him, in the end.

_How irritating,_ he thought. This was like Rin all over again, although the memory of his deceased teammate made him ashamed of himself. He was not a child anymore, and Rin’s affections had not been as burdensome as he had pretended.

It was strange though, he thought, the patterns his life followed, down to the smallest details. A war, an unrequited love, friends lost, and him, unmoored and unanchored. Not for the lack of trying, no. Not that he wanted to be sent adrift, no. But a sense of unworthiness, of not exactly fitting in, not being made of the same material others were made of, clung to him stubbornly. Unlike Naruto’s burning desire to belong and be seen, Kakashi had always assumed his fate was to fade away, unremembered and unseen, as he’s always had.

—

However—

There was just one thing.

Ino’s voice followed him around, repeating incessantly.  _Sakura is sure that you love her, too._

_I don’t._ Kakashi sounded angry, even to himself. He wanted to go to Sakura, to straighten this out, to relieve her of this assumption.  _I don’t love you. I don’t love YOU. Not in that way._

Of course, he wouldn’t confront her. He’d rather live out the rest of his life wearing Gai’s jumpsuit than cause Sakura any more pain, knowingly. He wanted to do something else—perhaps date someone else? Compulsively marry someone else? But those were silly ideas and he recognized them for what they were the moment he thought of them.

He wanted to ask Ino, but he didn’t dare. He had actually asked it out loud, to Rin, hoping that the other girl who had loved him in that way would give him some sign, some direction. But Rin was quiet, as she had always been since that day, and Kakashi was left all alone.

—

Kakashi had been hoping to patch things up between them, when Sakura started to disappear.

They were brief, in the beginning. She’d be notably absent from the casual outings and the trainings Team Seven had. Medics were always a valued part of any mission, and Sakura would always seem to be included, regardless of mission rank. Kakashi chalked it up to her wanting to avoid him, and assumed that she’d get around to it somehow. She was bound to. They were both adults, after all.

Then the absence grew longer, and the shadows lengthened.

Kakashi wanted to say something, but was he really in the position to say anything? The way Sakura’s face fell, like windows being shuttered, haunted him. And by extension, he felt a little more unworthy of being in the presence of people who loved her as well. It wasn’t like anyone said anything, but that was more than enough for him.

Naruto did have one throwaway line, but it wasn’t an accusation. They had been assigned on a mission together, no big deal, but Sakura had bowed out as usual.

“That’s okay,” Naruto said when he heard the news. “Sakura-chan’s been teaching me some techniques, so you should be in good hands, sensei.”

“That’s good,” Kakashi replied. Then, because he couldn’t stand silence around Naruto for more than two seconds, he added: “Is Sakura doing alright, then?”

“I guess,” Naruto replied, a little cagey. “Don’t worry about her; she’ll come around.”

He wasn’t worried. He just wasn’t. “I’m not worried,” Kakashi said. Just to be sure.

“Just give her time,” Naruto persisted. “It’s all about the timing with Sakura. She just never seemed to get it right. And me and her—” Here Naruto broke off, laughing quietly. He didn’t need to say anything more. Kakashi knew, as someone who had been on the sidelines all this time, that Naruto and Sakura had tried, had genuinely tried, to be what they thought they should have been all along. And as a part of Team 7, Kakashi had a special insight to saw how it all started, and how it all ended. There was too much history, too much pain, and Sasuke’s death had given the final blow that ensured that it was a bridge that could not be crossed.

So when Naruto says that it would eventually be overcome, it was because he was speaking from experience.

And yet that did nothing for Kakashi’s unease.

Naruto gave him a look, though. “I didn’t think it’d be you, though,” he said, wistfully. “But now that I think about it, it makes sense.”

Kakashi said nothing. He didn’t understand how Naruto thought this way, but it was a topic he didn’t want to pursue.

“Come on,” Naruto nudged him at the side. “Let’s drown our sorrows in ramen. A little pre-mission treat.” Kakashi suspected it was more for Naruto than him, but who could say no to free food?

He just wasn’t aware that there were any sorrows to drown.

—

He was surprised to find her in Suna, but it wasn’t her.

Kakashi’s hand stayed a beat longer than polite on the woman’s shoulder before her pointedly angry glare told him to shove off. He had been so sure it was her.

He hadn’t seen Sakura for six months now.

The Kazekage had mentioned that she was with a chuunin team for a lower-ranked mission a few weeks ago, one of those missions that was more for learning purposes than anything, but Sakura took those on, anyway. What had seemed like an avoidance tactic at first was turning out to be a full-on self-imposed exile, and Kakashi wasn’t sure he liked it.

Not that it was his right to approve anything Sakura did, of course.

When he saw a pink-haired woman, his reaction had been illogical, visceral. She looked nothing like Sakura of course, was actually too tall to be Sakura, but until he had caught up with her on the street, Kakashi had been so sure that it was her; until she faced him and proved otherwise.

Kakashi was well-versed with loss, knew its edges and contours, but this—this exile was turning out to be something else altogether. He had wanted this whole affair to be done clean and quietly, like a well-executed mission, but he was a fool for thinking it would go the way he had expected it should. He thought he had it all figured out. Sakura would come around and they would all be as it were, as close to normalcy as it had ever been.

He hadn’t counted on Sakura taking herself out of the equation entirely. And by the seemingly random way she joined missions, she wasn’t just keeping busy, she was throwing herself into danger as well. She was the Hokage’s apprentice, for all intents and purposes, and she was _valuable_. He was a little angry that she would be so reckless.

He didn’t think that breaking her heart would be one of the last times he’d see her.

—

He tried to trace back where it all began. If he could not find her now, he’d find her somewhere in time.

_“You could just talk to me,”_  her voice floated back to him in memory. It was a clear afternoon, and she had stood beside him on the cenotaph. There must have been some look in his eyes that made her uneasy.  _“I mean, I know doing this—if you need someone to actually talk back, you know…”_

Kakashi knew the difference between alive and dead, knew that years before, and he believed in that delineation even when the Edo Tensei turned out to be true. Reanimated corpses functioned on memory, and no matter how accurate they spoke or acted, they were merely shadows of their former selves. They were not supposed to stay, they were not supposed to last. He knew this, and understood what she was trying to say, but there hadn’t been, well, _people_  to remind him otherwise. Living people, that was. He’d been on his own for so long, that this suggestion was almost as if Sakura had asked him to walk differently, or to put his Sharingan on the opposite eye socket—it could be done, but it would be, well, different. And unfamiliar.  

_“I’m not your student anymore,”_ she said, as if he needed reminding. He’d never told her, but she was the first one he started considered his equal. A little sooner than Naruto anyway, who still called him sensei every now and then. She’d been mother hen and unofficial co-captain for so long, she had transitioned so seamlessly from the girl she had been to the woman that she was now. He didn’t need her to tell him what he already knew.

Maybe his mistake was that he let her. He thought it was kindness to let her in his life, little by little. She was marooned, too, first by Sasuke’s death and second by the disappointment with Naruto. Kakashi had been the last of what had been, and so Sakura clung onto him in a way that she couldn’t have done with Yamato nor Sai.

He thought that he was doing the right thing.

And as usual, he fucked everything up.

—

He sometimes wondered how she saw him.

As part of the older generation, it was understood that their time in the sun was over, it was time to give way and diminish gracefully and all that. Their role was to be surpassed, and that’s Kakashi did; but he couldn’t help but wonder sometimes, how they saw him. He had set low expectations from the get-go, but he surprised himself with how consistent he was with his failures. First with Sasuke, and then with Naruto and Sakura. He had all let them down, and he had let them go without much of a fight.

He was a sadsack; he knew that. He didn’t want to be, most of the time, but sometimes when Sakura looked at him with admiration, all he wanted to do was crawl in a hole in shame.

Once, she had come to him to consult about how to approach a diplomatic task and he had asked, “Why?”

Then the surprise was reflected in Sakura’s face. “Why not?” she asked right back. Right then and there, he was mortified with himself, thought that his younger self would be horrified to see how pathetic he’d turned out to be in adulthood. Just one naked insecurity after another.

Fortunately she withheld the scrutiny and turned back to the task at hand.

He wished he could go back, wished he could go back in time, put up his hand and draw the lines.  _No, stop here, you don’t know what you’re doing, you don’t know what you want._  She was young and damaged, and he, well, he was just damaged.

But she could do so much better. And that was the thing, that was the thing, see.

He could’ve stopped her looking at him like she trusted him with her life, and believed him despite everything he did wrong, and he wished he did. But he had been a selfish bastard, and he needed someone there, too, someone familiar and comforting and present and solid and _real_. Someone who saw him and didn’t flinch with what she saw.

Then she disappeared, and he was starting to realize that she changed him, and she had changed everything. All the spaces she occupied began to be the places that didn’t contain her.

—

It had been raining when she told him she loved him.

It was still raining when he got back to his small apartment. They had planned to have tea. She had brought along a new blend she wanted him to try, and it lay there untouched. Pathetic. The kettle was still on the stove. He didn’t have the heart to put those things away so he merely crawled back into bed and slept the rest of the day away. When he woke up, the sky was already pitch dark, the rain refusing to give way to the sun.

Kakashi lay there for hours, his mind a blank.

Months later, and his kitchen table was still exactly the same way as she had left it.

—

Sakura had probably found the wider world beyond Konoha and decided to stay there. That’s what he told himself sometimes, when the quiet got too loud. When he woke up from nightmares and she wasn’t there to hold his hand.

He wasn’t a goddamned child. He wasn’t allowed a childhood, why would he be a child now? He could live without, as he had always had.

But one day Naruto showed up at his doorstep and told him that Sakura had been gone too long, and was presumed missing. And then—

He remembered that day, the other side of the door, where his father lay waiting. Kakashi had known before he had seen, and he never ever wanted to go through that door. It was raining that day, too, and he had heard the dull thud, the sharp scent of iron.

He didn’t cry that day, he remembered.

Then, another memory: Sakura sitting opposite him in her small kitchen. She had been laughing at something he said, and her hair smelled like violets.

_“Do you see it?”_ she asked as she gently passed her palm over his eyes. They had been joking about using him as an X-ray instead of buying the complicated machines for the hospital. And he did see it, all the nerves and sinew and blood that made up Haruno Sakura.

Then she put her hand down and there was nothing between them. She had pressed her lips together, and there was a faint sheen of sweat on her forehead. She blinked slowly.  _“It must be odd, to see everything like that,”_ she said, saying something for the sake of saying something.

_“You get used to it,”_  he had said. _“The trick is to make yourself blind to everything else, so it won’t overwhelm you.”_

She looked out the window.  _“Kakashi…”_

_“Yes?”_

Sakura shook her head, then closed her eyes. She was about to ask him a question, he saw it half-formed in her mouth. He saw her decide against it.

_“Nevermind.”_

—

Some people self-destructed in beautiful ways. Kakashi was not one of them.

As if asking for penance for all the days he made her wait, Kakashi started spending his days at the gates, at the bridge, at all the places where she had been. He turned down missions, and refused to see friends. The cenotaph went unattended, the flowers he last laid turned to dust.

People started talking, like they always did. They held him up as an example—here was a man who lived with regrets. He was a magic trick, behold the man frozen in time! He heard a rumor that he’d gone mute, and that was almost true, anyway.

_Sakura is sure that you love her too._ Ino’s words haunted him now.

See the trick was, the trick was easy. To keep yourself blind from everything else, to be able to do the things you thought you were supposed to be doing. It was a concept he’d always attempted to explain, but failed to. His Sharingan was borrowed, and he couldn’t shut his eyes against it. He had to compensate, somehow. Fooling himself had been second nature.

Naruto showed up, sometimes, during these vigils. The younger man had refused to believe that she was really gone, and did what Kakashi couldn’t do—Naruto chased down every rumor, traced every place that she had been, to no avail. Kakashi didn’t have it in him to do that, not especially since he had been the one to drive her away.

They stood shoulder to shoulder, in the rain, in the sun. There were no words to exchange. There was nothing to say, and all they could do was to stand sentinel in the slim hope that day she would come back.

But today—

“I loved her, Naruto.” Today, he was tired of fighting.

His former student  turned to him, surprised—no, not surprised. No. There was regret etched in the younger man’s face. Kakashi had known, but said nothing.

Kakashi kept his eyes on the horizon. His voice was cracked and hoarse from months of disuse, and he sounded like a stranger to himself. “It’s my fault she’s gone… It’s my fault she—” Then he couldn’t take it anymore. The months—years—came crashing down, and he couldn’t hold himself up anymore, and Naruto, Naruto was crying too, holding him up, weeping like a child. Naruto, who had been so tired of crying.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” He kept repeating the word until it didn’t mean anything, until it filled up the spaces that hurt and all the spaces that missed her. Until he would start believing it, until started to mean something again.

—

_It had been raining that day, and Kakashi watched as Sakura unfurl an umbrella over them._

_“Is this alright?” she asked, weirdly refusing to meet his eyes._

_He looked up at the sky lit up with lightning. “Are you sure you want to go, Sakura?”_

_“Of course,” Sakura was stubborn as usual. “Visiting the cenotaph is important for us; we have to go.” When had she started slipping into a language that included her and himself? It was vaguely irritating. He contemplated telling her off._

_Instead he said, “Alright.” Then, “I didn’t know you were such a stickler for schedules, Sakura.”_

_She gave a short laugh. “How WOULD you know? You’re always late to everything to even notice that I was.”_

_“You will never understand what it’s like to be lost on the path of life,” he replied, falling back on his old excuse like a worn pillow._

_She was touching her hair, tugging down at her shirt. She was nervous. He wondered why. “I won’t,” she said. Then, in a lower tone, she added, “And even if I did, I’d find a way to come back. I’ll always find a way to come back.”_

_And he knew she meant it. Sakura would never abandon people the way they had always abandoned her._

—

Sakura had been wrong, of course. He could only ever love someone who was exactly like her.

In the morning, Kakashi took a short walk to the bridge where he waited for her. Sometimes Pakkun or one of the other ninkens accompanied him. Sometimes it was Naruto, or Sai, or Yamato, or Gai. Most of the time, he was alone.

He would stand on the bridge and watch the horizon for her familiar face, the wispy way her pink hair would fall across her forehead. He already knew what he was going to say, how he was going to apologize for saying no, for being such an idiot, for not knowing what he’d always known.

But for now, he would wait. As long as it would take. He would wait.

Because she had promised that she would be coming back; and when she did, he would be here, here to stay, because he believed in her, that she would find a way to return to him.

—

On his kitchen table, her favorite porcelain cup lay waiting for her.


End file.
